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Health
Defined: the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; freedom from physical disease or pain; the general condition of the body; flourishing condition: well-being.
Unless we have a genetic condition, or have sustained some kind of damage within the womb or during the birth process, we come into this world as naturally healthy babies. From that point on it is natural for our bodies to operate to stay healthy.
The medical establishment has a good idea of what constitutes a healthy body. While they may not know all the particulars on how it stays healthy, they generally know a healthy body when they see it.
The body will stay healthy if you feed it the right combination of food and water; keep it exercised; allow it to breathe in fresh clean air; get enough sunshine without overdoing it; and stay out of toxic environments. It almost sounds like growing a plant. Isn’t that great? So far this seems fairly straightforward and something that all people should be able to do.
Now as we can read from our definition above, there are one to two more parts to the health equation we can explore, the mind and spirit. The mind I will write about, the spirit will have to wait for another time.
Most people are aware that in addition to our body we have a mind. Some see this as an organic part of the brain within the body. In other words, our brain is our mind – nothing more and nothing less. Others say that the mind exists outside of the human body yet uses the brain in a similar way as a central processing unit in a computer. From my personal experience I know it to be the latter of the two.
The mind can exist at different levels in relationship to the body. To keep it simple we can say that the mind can be conscious or unconscious in its relationship to the body. Many things that take place in the body itself happen on an unconscious level. For example, most of us neither consciously keep track of each beat of our heart nor the intake and expelling of each breath.
The body itself pretty much takes care of itself when allowed to. However it cannot do everything and that is where the mind comes in. The mind is what drives the body to eat the right combination of food and water; get physical exercise; locate the body where there is fresh clean air to breathe; to safely get in and out of the sun; and to recognize and stay out of toxic environments.
The mind and body have a synergy. They work together to operate as a human being. The mind uses the body to express itself. Through the experience of life as a human the mind develops routines or habits on how to do things, perceive things, and so forth. These routines are basically written into the physical brain through memory and synaptic connections.
Can these routines, habits, and so forth be less than optimal or even defective? They certainly can be and that leads me to the next question. What is a healthy mind? For Americans a healthy mind is whatever a consortium of psychiatrists says it is. If you exhibit a symptom of psychopathology as listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association then you may not be mentally healthy. If you do not exhibit the symptoms listed within this manual then you are considered mentally healthy or normal.
Now that we all know how to see if we are mentally healthy let’s get our copy of the manual. Wait a minute, hold on. First of all, the manual is about 943 pages long, and should most people try to diagnose themselves with it? Probably not.
So, from a layman’s perspective what is a good guideline as to what a healthy mind is? After doing a little research I came up with a few things that others have said about it:
- Psychoanalysts say that being free from conflict, anxiety, and guilt is a sign of mental health.
- Robert White suggested that organisms need to have a sense of being in control of their environment.
- Gordon Allport saw a healthy and mature personality as a unified and hierarchically organized personality structure.
- Carl Rogers saw a mentally healthy person as one who can accept herself as she is.
- Abraham Maslow suggested one should be able to freely express one’s true nature.
That is an interesting collection and I see where each definition may fall short of a universally valid definition of what a healthy mind is. For instance, how does one express one’s true nature when the person does not know or remember what it is? And a psychopath would fit within definition one without any problem.
It appears then that defining what mental health is is much harder to do than to define what physical health is. Let’s put the definition aspect aside for the rest of this article and get back to that synergy of body and mind.
It has been demonstrated enough times to know that if you keep your body healthy then that goes a long way towards keeping a healthy mind regardless of what definition one uses. Interestingly, I suggest that anyone that does not strive to keep his or her body healthy probably has something going on mentally that is diverting the mind from performing one of its key roles, which is to keep the body healthy.
What could possibly be the thing diverting the mind from keeping the body healthy? It probably comes down to one of two things, ignorance as to how to keep it healthy or something negative going on in the mind that is taking priority over the body’s health.
It has been shown enough times that having a negative perspective about oneself or life in general can lead to physical illness and even death. While having an optimistic and positive outlook can overcome illness, even cancer. So, it appears that the synergy goes both ways for good health. Keeping the body healthy helps to keep the mind positive and healthy, while having a positive and healthy mind helps to keep the body healthy.Related Articles:
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